Tours & Cruises

Theater and Culture in England and N.Y.

Critics' Choice International is offering its 22nd annual London and Theatre tour from Dec. 28 to Jan. 7. Guests will spend nine nights at the Athenaeum Hotel and Apartments in Piccadilly and attend seven London shows, with all seats in the stalls or dress circle. The group will also meet a London critic, take a backstage theater tour, visit a museum and celebrate New Year's at a gala after-theater dinner party. Ed Kaufman, drama professor and theater critic, will lead the tour and meet with the group for informal critical sessions after each show.

Cost: $3,899 per person, double occupancy, including accommodations, round-trip air fare from Los Angeles, all theater tickets, daily full English breakfast, some meals, motor-coach transportation, entrance fees, a city tour of London, a trip to the countryside, all tips, taxes and portage.

Travelers who join Saddleback College Community Education's Holiday Experience in Great Britain tour will celebrate Christmas in an elegant country hotel in the Cotswolds with all the trimmings and New Year's Eve in Edinburgh, Scotland, with bagpipes, dancing and "Auld Lang Syne."

On Boxing Day, Dec. 26, the group will attend a sending off of the hounds of the Beaufort Hunt at Badminton House and attend a pantomime in Bath in the afternoon. This 14-day tour departs Dec. 20 and returns Jan. 2. The tour includes three nights in London; two nights in Stratford, with a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theater; medieval York; and side trips to Oxford, Bath and Sulgrave Manor--the ancestral home of George Washington.

Cost: $3,675 per person, double occupancy, including round-trip air fare from LAX to London and return from Edinburgh, accommodations, most meals and holiday programs.

The El Camino College Theatre Department will sponsor a New York Theatre Tour from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1 and will include orchestra seats to three new productions: "Scarlet Pimpernel," "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Gross Indecencies." Participants will also have the option to add "Titanic" and/or a New Year's Eve performance of "The Lion King," the new Disney musical. Also included in the tour are after-show seminars with the performers and a workshop with a New York acting coach.

A trip billed as the Borneo Sports Spectacular will have you climbing 13,455-foot Mt. Kinabalu, rappelling off cliffs, spelunking and rafting. The first trip runs April 19 to May 5; other dates are available.

Cost: from $2,390 per person, double occupancy, including accommodations, meals, equipment, guides and porters. The price does not include air fare.

Getaway Adventures is offering biking and multisport trips to Hawaii's Big Island this winter. The six- and eight-day trips feature luxury accommodations and easy to moderate cycling designed for all abilities. Departures for the 1997-98 season are Nov. 16, Dec. 7 and 21, Jan. 11 and 25, Feb. 8 and 22, and March 8 and 22.

In addition, there are historic stops, including the City of Refuge, Capt. Cook's monument and a visit to the island's only winery.

Activities include bicycling between 30 and 40 miles a day, a day of hiking, a day of snorkeling and kayaking.

Cost: $1,249 for six days and $1,599 for eight days per person, double occupancy, including van support, all meals, accommodations and entrance fees. Air fare is extra.

Contact: Getaway Adventures; tel. (800) 499-BIKE.

Harp Seal Watch

An eight-day tour north of Canada's Prince Edward Island to see harp seal pups is being sponsored by Mountain Outin' Tours, March 1 to 8. From the ice-bound Gulf of St. Lawrence, participants will fly by helicopter to the ice floes to observe newborn harp seal pups. The pups are born with snow-white fur and remain on the ice floes for their first two weeks.

Cost: $1,895 per person, double occupancy, including air fare from LAX to Montreal, train to New Brunswick, with private sleeping car compartment, motor coach to Charlottetown (crossing Northumberland Strait over the Confederation Bridge), lodging in Montreal and Charlottetown, helicopter flight to the ice floes, services of an experienced naturalist-guide, winter survival gear, all lodging, transfers and some meals.